“The Street” is from Romare Bearden’s early “Projections” series, which documents the artist’s childhood in North Carolina and his migration to Harlem. These works began as small collages made with newspaper and magazine clippings, photographs, and paint, which were then enlarged using the Photostat copy process—which allowed Bearden to create large–scale reproductions on gelatin silver paper. Speaking later of the series, Bearden said, “What I’ve attempted to do is establish a world through art in which the validity of my Negro experience could live and make its own logic. . . . The medium I used was chosen intentionally because assemblage forges a variety of contrary images into one unified expression.